When Dari Haddon placed her finger on an ad in the Toronto Star advertising a log home for sale on L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, she thought she was buying her dream country farmhouse.
Owner of a 100-acre lot in Castleton, Ont., Haddon planned to spend the rest of her days enjoying a slower pace of life in a rustic home. As the logs were dismantled, shipped and eventually reassembled on her little piece of paradise, that dream became a reality.
But what she didn’t realize was that she’d bought more than just an old house – it was a window into an entire family’s history.
A note from the seller traced the home’s roots back to Michael O’Hare, an Irish immigrant believed to have built the structure around 1845. The building had housed one of four post offices on the Island, before being decommissioned and living on as an O’Hare family home for generations.
With help from her sister Lynda, an amateur historian with a knack for researching old buildings, she soon realized that she now owned a piece of Pontiac history – one that would connect the sisters with descendents of the original family and the nearly 180 years of lives lived within its walls.
Family lore suggests Irish immigrant Michael O’Hare built the house around 1845 using timber cut on the property. He and his wife, Mary Tirrell, raised eight children there while operating a farm and eventually serving the community through the post office.
The postmaster role later passed to O’Hare’s son John, helping establish a family connection to the building that would last for generations. John and his wife Helen raised 11 children, many of whose descendants still reside in the area.
The house remained in the family’s hands until it was sold in 1991, ending nearly 150 years of ownership by the O’Hare family.
For descendent Colleen Hobbs, who lived in the house until she was 11 years old, the home is tied to stories passed down from generations prior. In one story, her grandmother, Carmel, pretended to be sick during an outbreak because everyone else was isolating and caring for each other in the attic, and she didn’t want to be left out.
“She went upstairs with all the others, but she didn’t last very long because they were quite delirious with fever, and I guess that was hurting her because she was just a little girl, so she always laughed about how quickly she recovered,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs said those stories, of early family life on the island, are what make the house special.
“We’re more than just dates, right? There are people, there’s lives, and there’s living, and there’s tragedy, and there’s joy, and there’s everything that happened within those logs.”
But once the property left the O’Hare family, the home sat unused for over a decade. The next owners used the building for storage, eventually selling it to local couple Allan Lachance and Adrienne Turgeon.
By then, years of neglect had taken a toll on the interior.
“It was a mess inside. Critters get in, and they make their nests, and they do their thing. It was pretty grungy,” Lynda Haddon told THE EQUITY, recalling an interview with log-home specialist Gavin Wilson, whom Lasalle and Turgeon hired to dismantle and relocate the logs.
Despite the condition of the interior, Wilson said the logs were still in remarkable shape.
Haddon, who spoke with Wilson in her research about the home, said that he considered it “the nicest and most unique log house that he had ever invested his time, money and energy in preserving.”
Lachance and Turgeon, who share an interest in local history, said they sold the logs because they had no use for them. Turgeon said she was pleased to learn the building’s story would continue at a new location.
“I was all happy and pleased because it’s their heritage, and they’re piecing it together,” said Turgeon.
Hobbs said she is grateful for their decision to give the home new life, adding that many buildings of the same vintage don’t meet the same fate.
“Too many of the old log homes, they’re either just sort of brought to the ground or are practiced for the volunteer fire departments in the area,” she said.
Once Wilson had tagged, numbered and transported the logs, he sold them to a specialist in Newcastle, where the home was reconstructed and an ad was placed in the Toronto Star.
When Dari Haddon purchased the home, she had never heard of L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, let alone the O’Hare family. But after reading the note explaining the history of the building, she and her sister soon found themselves immersed in it.
Lynda, who had written three short-length books on the history of various buildings in Perth, Ont., researched and wrote a 26-page book on the history of the O’Hare family and the role it played in the community.
“And there’s so many unanswered questions. And if the walls could talk, of course you could fill in the blanks,” she said. “But it’s not going to happen. So I just put my pen to the paper.”
The research eventually led the sisters to descendants of the O’Hare family, whom they contacted to learn more about the building’s history. The families have become fast friends, bonding over this connection to a seemingly random building and a shared love of history.
In 2024, the Haddons visited L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet to meet several O’Hare descendents, as well as Lachance and Turgeon, each sharing stories about the house. For each of the past two years, the families reunited again in Castleton so family members could see the home in its new location.
Hobbs, who spent part of her childhood in the house, said it has been interesting to spend time in the building and reminisce about family lore. But she said the connections that have emerged from the project, whether with the Haddons or with extended family, have been the most rewarding parts.
“We’ve all met and it’s just been one of those magical stories where things just happen. Synchronicity is what brought everyone together.”
Haddon said she has appreciated getting to know the family and bringing the building’s history to life. She said those relationships have added another layer of meaning to the home.
“This house is so much richer to me, given that I know the story behind it, right from its origin. And knowing some of the people who have lived here or descendants from people who built it and lived here . . . There’s a whole story attached to it.”
Hobbs said she and other family members feel that their family home has a great caretaker in Dari, and that she hopes the house will last on the property for another 150 years.
“It’s nice to see that that building is living on now with Dari and her family, and it’s going to be filled with just equally beautiful memories.”
